The phrase “full-blown nut job” is not always a nice way to describe someone. But it may be, in some cases, an accurate way.

For this week’s cold open on Saturday Night Live, Kate McKinnon was CNN’s Kate Bolduan, while Cecily Strong took on real-life nut Scottie Nell Hughes, a Trump supporter and conservative pundit.

It’s a great skewer of Trump supporters. But for a fake media interview, it’s almost too close to life. Nell Hughes even predicted her own appearance last month, saying that Trump supporters “have been abused, they have been slaughtered, they have been made fun of, on everything from the nightly news to Saturday Night Live.”

The harmful effects of prohibition have been understood by anyone who cares to pay attention. This has been abundantly clear since U.S. alcohol prohibition, way back in 1920 up until 1933.

It was just recently that the Supreme Court tossed a lawsuit involving marijuana legalization, scoring a win for cannabis advocates nationwide. But now, it looks like there’s a chance the federal government could do the unthinkable: actually take measures to decriminalize and recognize marijuana legalization laws nationwide. Well, it’s not quite as simple as that — but the feds are going to make a decision, and soon.

Jacob SullumIn a memo it sent to members of Congress on Monday, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says it hopes to announce by the end of June whether it has decided that marijuana no longer belongs in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), the law's most restrictive category.

Growing up, 36-year-old Lamine Zarrad learned the hard way what it’s like to be a disenfranchised outsider. Born in Azerbaijan, Zarrad and his parents fled ethnic conflict in the former Soviet republic in the 1990s and ended up living in a freezing former lithium processing factory in Moscow. Surrounded by contaminated machinery, they survived on condensed milk and corn flakes distributed by Western NGOs.

Just as chocolatiers fancy February, florists adore May and necktie retailers love June, the marijuana industry truly celebrates April.

With the recent legalization of cannabis in certain areas of the United States, the unofficial holiday of 4/20 has legitimized itself. And the industry has the booming sales numbers to prove the holiday’s now-official status.

When dissecting Colorado marijuana sales data for 2015, three of the year’s 10 most lucrative days landed on April 20 and the weekend that preceded it, according to BDS Analytics, a firm that specializes in cannabis industry data collected from dispensaries’ point-of-sale systems.

The man who calls himself Kushgod is conflicted.

Normally, he wants all the attention he can get. In big, bold letters, he has plastered KUSH GODS on what police describe as his “fleet of Kush Gods vehicles.” He named his daughter Freedom Kushgod. He juggles two phones and a bevy of social media profiles featuring “Kush Godesses” striking languid poses on a Kush Gods Mercedes. Media requests are usually accepted on one condition: Cameras must be present.

Across the world, more and more people are asking: Why is marijuana banned? Why are people still sent to prison for using or selling it?

Most of us assume it’s because someone, somewhere sat down with the scientific evidence, and figured out that cannabis is more harmful than other drugs we use all the time—like alcohol and cigarettes.

Somebody worked it all out, in our best interest.

But when I started to go through the official archives, researching my book Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, to find out why cannabis was banned back in the 1930s, I discovered that’s not what happened.

Not at all.

With the Panama Papers' revelations of transnational financial skulduggery now burning up the Internet, Bernie Sanders' many fans have started passing around a video of a fairly prescient speech the presidential candidate delivered back in 2011. At the time, the U.S. was considering a free trade agreement with the charming Latin America tax haven, supported by President Obama and his then–secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. But progressive activists argued that the deal would only make it harder for the U.S. government to deal with bank secrecy and tax avoidance. Sanders brought those concerns to the Senate floor:

International progress abounds from beyond the borders! Costa Rica already decriminalized cannabis, but now it's considering a major medical marijuana program, New Zealand’s Labour Party is trying to solve a problem like medical cannabis access, and the United Kingdom found that the number of cannabis arrests have been cut nearly in half in the last five years.

Stateside, Alaska’s retail licenses are being held up by the Legislature, Arizona’s recreational campaign calls out the hypocrisy of a critic, New Hampshire could decriminalize cannabis possession (again), and Vermont is a hop, skip and one House vote away from legalizing recreational cannabis. This year will be historical for cannabis – are you paying attention?